Lamers, and Cheaters, and Newbies, oh my

None of those are particularly new to online games in general or TFC in particular. But with the steady increase of people playing online games the number of lamers and cheaters has logically increased as well.

For those who have no idea what a "lamer" is: A lamer is somebody intentionally interrupting, hindering or affecting the game in a negative way. Examples from TFC: Killing teammates, blocking passages or doors with sentries, constantly shooting at teammates, intentionally spreading infections, hiding with the enemy flag somewhere at the map, etc. I guess we all have met such behaviour on way too many occasions.Those people’s intention is to provoke, to ruin the game for others. They get off when people start swearing and shouting at them. They want to draw attention with their actions. Either they’ve joined a server with the intention to piss people off, or they are frustrated by the way the game runs for them (some people just can’t cope with losing).

Not much one can do against lamers. Unless there’s an admin nearby to warn the lamer and – if necessary – kick him options are few. Just one word of advice: Regardless what these idiots do and how much they annoy you, refrain from sinking to their level and responding with lame actions yourself, however understandable that would be. Often the best idea is switching to another server …

Your standard cheater is a different animal. Cheating means to utilize bugs or modifications to gain advantage over the other players. One prominent cheat for TFC is using a pak with modified models (spiked models) that makes it easier to spot enemies, to make out positions of sentries through walls or to locate snipers.The problem with cheaters is that most of them try to get away with cheating without being caught. Their main motivation is to pretend more skill than they actually have and/or to be more successful in the game than they would be otherwise. Being revealed as cheater of course destroys that impression. Because of that people will always deny when accused of cheating. And often enough it’s difficult to tell if you deal with a cheater or a skilled person (I expect voices of protest here).

Everybody hates lamers. Messageboards are full of stories and complaints about them. With Encounters with Lamers exists a site fed with stories about them (though occasionally it’s difficult to say who the lamer is: The one described in the story or the person telling it). Interestingly the same is not true about cheating. Sure, everybody is looking down at cheating and the people using it. But when it comes to dealing with cheating people start to dance around the topic, sometimes presenting some strange thoughts.

On a messageboard a newsie of a TFC-site anonymously posted a link to the mentioned cheat-pak. When uncovered and approached he justified his action with the argument that the cheats would exist anyway, so everybody should have access to it to even the field.

Yeah, sure. We nullify the impact of cheats by using cheats ourselves. Smart thinking.

So why define any rules for the game at all? Why having maps with dark spots when glowing models can be used? Why playing sniper when everyone could spot where this sniper are aiming at? Why caring about sentry placement when a spiked model will give away its position through walls.

No, such a game would no longer be worth playing.

The other interesting aspect is the way some people to try to play down the power of cheats. I read a few postings on the Counterstrike Forum where people tried to deny the existence of certain cheats and then pointed out how useless the usage of such cheats would be (headshot script). Besides that people never grow tired to point out that cheats would have only limited effects and could easily be dealt with by experienced players.

Strangely enough two of these threads were started by people complaining of being accused for cheating because of their incredible skill.

I can’t help but thinking that these people are afraid to admit that some cheats can very well compensate skill to a certain degree. The use of glowing or spiked models, wallhacks, scripts to counter certain game effects (removing recoil-effect in CS or conc-effect in TFC) is a powerful tool and will enable even lesser skilled people to pull of some nice stunts (isn’t that why people cheat in the first place?).

Or all these people who tried to justify the use of the spy-burrowing bug, when it was still possible. “New feature”, “no advantage, everyone can do it” … some people won’t refrain from any means giving them an advantage, however cheap or disgraceful.

So, people, get down your high horse. Stop pretending cheats were just child’s game and give your ego a rest and admit that cheating can make up for skill (Note: cheating does not replace skill, and in many situations a lesser skilled cheater will still loose. But a cheater will always have a number of advantages. And if the cheater is skilled as well he will easily own an equally skilled non-cheating player). And keep in mind that the effect of cheating is far more devastating on clan matches than on those “unimportant” pub games. I wonder how often games have been decided by a clan using cheats …

Cheating ruins the game for all of us, independent of skill and experience.

We have to be stronger outspoken against cheats. We - as community - have to take a clear stand against cheating, without any dancing around.

Cheating sucks, cheaters suck, and all those people creating and publishing cheats should burn in hell (read: be sentenced to play Daikatana 24/7).

The community should knock off that “skill-is everything”-attitude and take a stand for the game they play and love, and for the way it’s supposed to be played (though I have my doubts that most of these 14-year old immature CS-kids will realize this).

TFC (and any other game in that matter) is not a game where “anything goes”. Fight hard, fight with skill, but remember to fight honorable. I know that some people never stop to promote to take any means necessary to win. But when these means include cheating then the line is crossed.

Okay, final part: What’s all this newbie-bashing lately?

Sure, newbies make stupid mistakes and ask stupid questions (and they never RTFM), they slow down the gameplay, they might mistake CTF with DM, and too many of them either play snipers or HWG. So what?

Was anybody here born with a mouse and a keyboard? Has anybody here joined the game the first time making everything perfectly right? Does anybody of you collect all information including manuals before joining a game the first few times?

I don’t know about you, but I remember that my first games on TFC weren’t that glorious. I played HWG in my first game. I built my sentry near the GC the first few times I played rock2 because I thought it was a good point, having no idea of the dynamics on that map. I suspected cheating when I met my first spy grenade, and of course I suspected cheating the first time I encountered c-jumpers .

So what kind of game community is this, which ridicules the people who want to join the game? Many of them will be your future teammates, maybe even clanmates. Some of them will learn, and practice, and one day own your sorry ass.

This is the new blood TFC needs. In fact desperately needs, with people leaving the game to play other Fortress-MODs like Q3A (and maybe UTF soon) or other games like CS or Firearms. Enough people left in disappointment of TF1.5.

So instead of bashing or mocking these new players you should try to help them making their first steps and teach them the way of the game.

And don’t carry your nose too high When I join the pubs today I see a lot of people who obviously play the game some time now. But they don’t communicate, they don’t care much about teamwork, some of them actually seem not to care about the team at all.

So any other day I would rather have a newbie at my side with no skill and no experience, but the right attitude than one of those “experienced” and “skilled” people which are just on another ego-trip on TFC. I will have more respect for a newbie with a 2/51 score who helped to defend the flag than somebody with a 51/2 score who just made his solo-stunts.

If anyone deserves bashing then these arrogant assholes who play TFC for some months now and still cannot spell teamwork, much less exercise it.

So the moral of today’s lesson is: Hate cheaters, love newbies. Not the other way around!